“Apparently he didn’t behave very well toward her when she was alive.”
“Yes, it could be true, though I never saw evidence of it. I do know they weren’t very happy together long before Hazel went to work for Quarles. So you see, if he’d intended to take matters into his own hands and kill Harold Quarles, he’d have done it then and there, in that confused and bitter state of mind. And he didn’t. That’s to his credit, don’t you see?”
“If he didn’t intend to kill him, why has Brunswick spent a good deal of his spare time of late looking into Quarles’s past? What good is it?”
Heller was surprised. “Has he been doing such a thing? He’s never said anything about it to me. What is he looking for, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that he himself understands what he’s after.”
“Yes, well, that may be true.” Curiosity got the better of him. “Has he found something?”
“Very little. I don’t think Quarles wanted his history to be found.
Well enough to boast about its simplicity, but not to have the truth about it brought into the open. The poor are not necessarily saints.
And sinners do have some goodness in them. Isn’t that what the church teaches?”
Heller took a deep breath. “Back to Michael. Do give him the benefit of the doubt. There’s much healing left to do.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Rutledge answered mildly. He turned to walk back toward the church, and Heller followed him. “We aren’t going to solve this dilemma, Mr. Heller, until we have our killer. And to that end, I must go on questioning people, however unpleasant it must be.”
Heller said nothing, keeping pace beside him, his mind elsewhere.
As they parted at the corner of the churchyard, he broke his silence. “I will pray for you to be granted wisdom, Inspector.”
“It might be more beneficial to your flock if you prayed for wisdom for Inspector Padgett as well.”
Heller smiled. “I already do that, my boy.” He glanced upward, where a flight of rooks came to perch on the pinnacles of the church tower. After a moment he said, “I’ve been told that Mrs. Quarles is home again, with her son. They’re to collect her husband’s body and take it north for burial. I did wonder why Mrs. Quarles hadn’t asked me to preside over a brief service here, before her husband was taken north. But that’s her decision to make, of course.”
“Perhaps here in Cambury, you know him better than Mrs.
Quarles wishes.”
Heller sighed. “I can tell you how it will be. Once Mr. Quarles has left the village, it will be as if he never was. We’ll not talk about his irritating qualities, because of course he’s dead. There will be a family bequest to the church, and we’ll name something after him, and forget him. It’s a poor epitaph for a man who was so forceful in life.”
“Did you know that Quarles’s partner, Davis Penrith, was the son of a curate?”
“Actually I believe Mr. Quarles brought that up once in a conversation. He seemed to find it amusing.”
“Because it wasn’t the truth, or because Penrith didn’t live up to his father’s calling?”
“I have no idea. But Mr. Quarles did say that he didn’t have to fear his partner, because the man would never turn against him. Or to be more precise, he said the one person he’d never feared was his partner, because Penrith would never have the courage to turn against him.”
“When was this?” Rutledge asked.
“I don’t remember just when—I think while Mr. Quarles was living here in Cambury for several weeks. I was out walking one afternoon, and he was coming back from one of the outlying farms. He stopped to ask me if he could give me a lift back to town, and I accepted. We got on the subject of enemies, I can’t think how . . .”
“That’s an odd topic for a casual encounter.”
“Nevertheless, he made that remark about Penrith, and I commented that loyalty was something to value very highly. He told me it wasn’t a matter of loyalty but of fact.”
Yet Penrith had walked away from their partnership. And as far as anyone knew, Quarles hadn’t felt betrayed. Had, in fact, done nothing to stop him.
“They were an unlikely pair to be friends, much less partners,”
Rutledge mused.
“Yes, that’s true. I thought as much myself from Mr. Quarles’s remarks. But there’s no accounting for tastes, in business or in marriage, is there? Good day, Mr. Rutledge.”
He watched the rector striding toward the church door, his head down, his mind occupied. As Heller disappeared into the dimness of the doorway, Hamish said, “There’s no’ a solution to this murder.”
“There’s always a solution. Sometimes it’s harder to see, that’s all.”
“Oh, aye,” Hamish answered dryly. “The Chief Constable will ha’
to be satisfied with that.”
Miss O’Hara was just coming out her door with a market basket over her arm as Rutledge passed her house. She hailed him and asked how the Jones family was faring.
“Well enough,” he told her.
“We ought to find whoever killed Quarles and pin a medal on him.
They do it in wars. Why not in peace, for ridding Cambury of its ogre.”
“That’s hardly civilized,” he told her, thinking that Brunswick might agree with her.
“We aren’t talking about civilization.” She drew on her gloves, smiled, and left him standing there.
Rutledge could still see her slender fingers slipping into the soft fabric of her gloves. They had brought to mind the uglier image of Harold Quarles’s burned hands, the lumpy whorls and tight patches of skin so noticeable in the light of Inspector Padgett’s lamps as the body came to rest on the floor of the tithe barn.
Like the coal mines, those hands were a part of the public legend of Harold Quarles. Neither Rutledge nor Padgett had thought twice about them, because they had been scarred in the distant past.
He turned back the way he’d come and went on to Dr. O’Neil’s surgery.
The doctor was trimming a shrubbery in the back garden. Rutledge was directed there by the doctor’s wife, and O’Neil hailed his visitor with relief. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his forehead and nodded toward chairs set in the shade of an arbor. “Let’s sit down.
It’s tiresome, trimming that lilac. I swear it waits until my back’s turned, and then grows like Jack’s beanstalk.”
They sat down, and O’Neil stretched his legs out before him.
“What is it you want to know? The undertaker has come for Quarles, and I’ve finished my report. It’s on Padgett’s desk now, I should think.”
“Thank you. I’m curious about those scars on Quarles’s hands.”
“You saw them for yourself. The injuries had healed and were as smooth as they were ever going to be. It must have happened when he was fairly young. I did notice that the burns extended just above the wrist. And the edges were very sharply defined, almost as if someone had held his hands in a fire. You usually see a different pattern, more irregular. Think about a poker that’s fallen into the fire. The flames shoot up just as you reach for it. You might be burned superficially, but not to such an extent as his, because in a split second you realize what you’ve done, drop the poker, and withdraw out of harm’s way.
What I found remarkable was that Quarles hadn’t lost the use of his fingers. That means he must have had very good care straightaway.”